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Atascadero appoints new fire chief

July 9, 2026

By KAREN VELIE

The city of Atascadero announced Thursday the appointment of David Van Son to head the Atascadero Fire Department. Van Son, currently a battalion chief, is slated to assume the role of chief on Sept. 19.

Casey Bryson is retiring on Sept. 18 after 26 years of service to Atascadero.

Van Son brings 37 years of fire service experience. He started his fire career with the Santa Barbara County Hot Shot Crew; after working three fire seasons, he joined the U.S. Air Force and served three years as a firefighter and senior airman before being hired as a firefighter with the City of Great Falls, Montana.

In 2021, Van Son joined the Atascadero Department of Fire and Emergency Services as a battalion chief. In this role, he has overseen fire prevention, plan review, public education, vegetation management, weed abatement enforcement, and fire and life safety inspections.

He works closely with residents, developers, businesses and regional partners to enhance wildfire preparedness, community resilience and public safety.

“Chief Van Son has demonstrated exceptional leadership, professionalism, and dedication throughout his career,” said City Manager James Lewis. “His commitment to public safety, his collaborative leadership style, his demonstrated integrity and calm and humble demeanor and the relationships he has built within our community, make him the right person to lead the department into its next chapter.”

 

 


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10 Comments

Please give some thought to not filling the vacated battalion chief position, re-arrange existing personnel, something has to be done address the unsustainable administration compensations and pension debt, the taxpayers need help.


18

Who exactly do you expect to take over his duties. They are already understaffed. They need to hire 2 additional Battalion Chiefs to have 24/7 operational coverage. They have 1 right now and the Fire Marshall is probably running the candle at both ends with all the development. Please don’t say put the work on the firefighters. They need to focus on firefighting. Training, Inspections, physical fitness, and emergency response are the priority. Look at Paso Robles. Similar population and development. Paso Robles is properly staffed for the mission. Public Safety costs money and the public deserves it.


0

First, do you agree the current level of administration compensations and pensions is unstastainable and puts a huge burden on the taxpayers?


0

That is irrelevant. The pay and benefits are what they are. My question was who will assume his duties. I can assure you without that position filled, development will come to a grinding halt. Yes you can redirect the duties, but other programs will suffer. Don’t you want the fire station personnel to be the best trained, experienced, and able to respond to emergencies quickly?


1

I have to disagree it is very relevant. The constant increase in compensations and pensions and how it drains from the taxpayers and takes away from roads, infrastructure, public safety and such is a concern. “The pay and benefits are what they are” attitude is the problem because it don’t need to be.


-1

Pay and benefits is not a problem. Unless you get rid of unions (won’t happen) and collective bargaining (won’t happen). If you don’t offer competitive compensation packages, your best employees will go elsewhere. Look at any public safety agency that can’t compete. They become a training ground for other agencies. I would rather pay competitive wages and benefits to maintain a police/sheriff/fire agency with good employees that remain in the community they serve and spend their salaries locally through sales and property taxes. It all comes down to priorities. In Atascadero, the citizens decided to tax themselves for better public safety facilities (New Fire Station 1, remodeled police and Fire Station 2). I live in the County and the Board of Supervisors have prioritized public safety and have begun to increase staffing to 3 career firefighters on all County Fire engines which is the industry standard. Yes it’s expensive, but volunteer (paid-call) firefighters unfortunately aren’t sustainable.


1

“your best employees will go elsewhere” never proven and no facts to support. What also is not sustainable is the current level of administration compensations and pensions.


-1

The employees will go elsewhere. SLO Sheriff has been losing employees to the city police departments. County Fire / CAL FIRE hires constantly and once they are trained lose them to Santa Barbara County Fire, SLO Fire, Paso Robles Fire. In the past several years, at least a dozen firefighters and paramedics go elsewhere. That is a fact. As I stated earlier, public safety costs money. Look at the recent articles of 2025 salaries. A Battalion Chief in LA made almost 1 million last year due to overtime. They can’t hire people fast enough, so it requires a lot of overtime to maintain minimum staffing. I ask again, who exactly will be doing the Fire Marshall duties if they don’t fill the position?


1

When compensations get to a sustainable level the taxpayers will be better off, no way a city manager in this area should have a compensation more than the CA governor, or a local city attorney more than than the CA Attorney General. In fact I’m all for paying say patrol officers more by reducing the outrageous compensations of administrations. Local compensations should be in line with local private sector and if those so called quality people want more then move to larger city/county that can support more, we can not here on the coast..


-1

Too many Chiefs and not enough;;;;;;


-2